


Fortitude

by tastewithouttalent



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Competition, Established Relationship, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-09-24 19:09:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17106455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Legolas should have known it would be a Dwarf who would break through the shell of his composure, in the end." Gimli puts himself to work and Legolas finds himself undone.





	Fortitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dipuc (TomAyto10)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomAyto10/gifts).



Legolas isn’t prone to effusive displays of emotion. He’s had centuries to perfect his composure, to gain control over the flickering waves of reaction and uncertainty and immediate, reflexive response that used to dominate his life as surely as they overrun the span of the Men doomed to hardly enough time to approach full maturity before death steps in to claim them. More than once Legolas has been grateful for the passage of years that have granted him a calm that he bears in place of the royal garb that is his by birthright if not by choice; it’s a relief, to know that the foolishness of his youth is so far in the past none but himself and those of his kind will recall it, to be able to turn his back on the violent emotions that used to run wild over his life and lay claim instead to a composure that will grant him the respect his years if not the ageless smooth of his face demand.

He should have known it would be a Dwarf who would break through the shell of his composure, in the end. Legolas has never been able to muster much patience for the other race: they are a coarse, unpolished people, bearing longer lives than the Men who claim vast swathes of the country in their endless pursuit of power but achieving even less than the humans who burn as brightly as if to make up for the brevity of their existence. Elves and Dwarves have bad blood between them, running all the way back to where even Elvish memory fails to support the recollection, and on first meeting Gimli son of Glóin Legolas was sure that he and his new companion would only serve to strike sparks enough to renew an age-old conflict in the fresh cast of the present.

He was partially right, at least. They certainly did find heat between them.

“ _Ah_ ,” Legolas groans, his voice breaking free of decades’ worth of composure to split open into a wail in his throat as Gimli moves into him. He’s sprawled flat over the soft sheets of the bed they share, his arm outstretched to clutch at the blankets and his other hand bracing at the delicate carvings that form the frame of the mattress beneath his weight, but he’s not appreciating the finery of the soft sheets any more than he is admiring the artistry in the carving under the grip of his sweat-slick fingers. “Gimli, please, I _can’t_.”

Gimli’s laugh comes from the very depths of his broad chest, beneath the braid of the beard shot through with grey that seems rather to be an indication of inner steel rising to the surface than any kind of impending infirmity of age. “Do ye mean to give up so easily to me, lad?” His hands shift against Legolas’s hips; his palms are broad, his fingers callused from the heft of a hammer as well as the grip of an axe. The texture of his hold seems to fit itself the closer to Legolas’s skin, as if forming itself to the shape of the other’s slender body to steady him for the next forward stroke of Gimli moving into him. “Is all that Elvish stamina good for no more than prancing across the top of snowdrifts?”

Legolas would like to protest this. He can outrun any Man, can lose any kind of Dwarvish pursuer; he can outpace many horses, at least those more than a few generations removed from that Shadowfax who has tied himself to Gandalf’s side. He does not lose his breath, does not feel the ache of exhaustion in his muscles as the mortal races do; Elvish physicality is more a convenience than a burden, something they wield for their own purposes rather than being condemned to the limitations imposed on others. Elvish stamina is something not even needing defense, for how entirely it surpasses that of all other races; and Gimli’s hips come forward, heavy pressure works far into the surrender of Legolas’s body, and any protest Legolas might have imagined disintegrates into a moan made helpless on the answering heat that surges through the distracting immediacy of his physical form.

Gimli groans from that same place deep down in his chest; his fingers tighten at Legolas’s hips, shifting in what is as much a caress as an adjusting of his grip against the other’s body. “Mind, I’m not complaining,” he says. He rocks his weight forward to press Legolas down closer against the bed for a moment so he can slide his knee wider by an inch and close against the inside of Legolas’s own trembling thigh. His body is steady, solid at every point they touch; Legolas can’t tell any indication of so much as a quiver in the muscle flexing under the curling hair that covers Gimli’s thighs and arms, even with the proof of the other’s arousal unflinchingly firm within him. “I never thought to have such an advantage in this kind of competition.”

“It is not an advantage,” Legolas manages, clenching against the sheets and pulling until he can lay claim to at least the illusion of composure. “The next time our positions are reversed--” and Gimli moves into him, and Legolas breaks off again, his voice stripped entirely from him this time by the clenching force of heat that radiates up and into the whole of his body.

“Aye,” Gimli says, partially amused and mostly warm, gentle on the glow of what Legolas knows as affection, what has come to mean as much to him as any of the cold satisfaction of victory in some or another petty squabble. “I can take ye up on that right now, if ye’d like it, laddy.” He leans in closer, tipping forward without easing the deep-down pressure of his hips working into Legolas; the force makes Legolas feel like Gimli is striving his way deeper, inexorable pressure sliding into him with every straining breath he manages. “Is that what ye’d like of me?”

Legolas blinks hard and shakes his head, rejecting the idea even before it entirely forms in his mind. “No,” he says, and turns his head down against the bed before him. His fingers tighten at the end of the bed as much on reflex as intent; he pushes against the support until he’s bracing his whole arm out straight enough to lock his elbow into steadiness. “I would not.”

Gimli’s laugh sounds like a purr, now, for the depth and range it shapes out at the inside of his chest. “That’s the spirit,” he says, and slides his hands to steady his grip against Legolas’s hips. “Hold on, laddy, and we’ll see if an Elf can’t take a Dwarf on after all.”

He doesn’t give Legolas a chance to reply before he begins moving. His hands are steady, his grip strong enough to give him the confidence to be gentle even in the force of his hold; when Legolas rocks up against that restraint there is no give at all, no wavering in Gimli’s grip bracing him still. It’s unflinching, certain pressure to lock him steady against the forward thrust of the other’s hips, and Legolas feels the friction of Gimli urging into him, pressure working against him with strokes steady-sure on their rhythm. It’s not enough individually, each motion would be no more than a single surge of friction easily absorbed and set aside on its own; but they keep coming, thrust after thrust, friction building upon friction as Legolas’s composure strains to bear the force. Legolas imagines this must be what stone feels like under the blow of a hammer, as a seemingly endless store of resistance begins to give way just under the sheer accumulation of dozens, hundreds of strokes rattling against it. Legolas’s arm is shaking where he’s holding himself in place, his lips parted and breath coming as hot as if with the fever his own immortal veins have never known, and still Gimli keeps moving, every strength-corded muscle in his body urging him forward to offer up more and more and more to the increasing strain of Legolas’s body before him.

“Ah,” Gimli groans, dragging the sound through the back of his throat to rattle like the first gravel of breaking, like a premonition of the crack Legolas can feel building in him, can feel shaping itself from the collection of all his weaknesses, of all the deep-etched desires that are joining together now to form a single line of uncertainty in him. “Ye are a joy to have, laddy.” Gimli rocks his weight back over his knees; the motion smooths his rhythm, turns it into something as fluid and easy as the snap of Legolas’s bow from his fingers, as the shape of an arrow leaping forward from the string. “I could take the whole of the day with ye and count it time well spent.”

Legolas takes a breath, meaning to speak something: teasing, maybe, or agreement, or just to give voice to the heat building to ache against his bones and settle pressure low down in his belly. But Gimli is still moving, the thick heat of his length still stroking down into the very core of Legolas’s existence with each motion, and Legolas’s breath knots in his chest, tangling itself around the pressure of anticipation too vivid for him to fight. His body is trembling, his legs straining and his arms flexing and his arousal arching hot towards the flat of his stomach, and when Gimli takes another thrust forward Legolas imagines he can feel himself starting to crack, as if he can see the fracture laying itself over that composure stretched too far and too long past its limits.

“Ah,” he gasps, heart pounding, fingers trembling, lashes fluttering. “ _Gimli_.”

Gimli groans. “Aye,” he says, and fixes his hold at Legolas’s hip. “I’m here with ye.” And he speeds his movement, accelerating the force of his action while that rhythm remains firm and unchanging. Legolas’s back curves, his shoulders flex hard enough to spill his hair in a loose curtain around his face, but he doesn’t reach to push it back, doesn’t think he can spare the attention to so much as unclench his fingers from the grip he has at the end of the bed.

“Please,” he hears himself saying, gasping to the sheets, pleading in a tone he never thought he would use in this century, in all the long years left to him. “Gimli, please, I’m--I--”

“Aye,” Gimli purrs in the back of his throat. “I can see that well enough.” His hands pull to urge Legolas back against him; Legolas’s breath spills to a moan against the sheets. “What d’ye want of me, Elf?”

“Gimli,” Legolas pants, tasting heat on his tongue, feeling fire in his veins. “Please--” and Gimli’s hips buck forward, and Legolas’s head goes back, his whole body arching into a curve as if to make a bow of himself for the urging of Gimli over him. His eyes open wide, his lips part, and then Gimli’s thumbs dig against him, and Legolas feel everything in him give way, stone cracking open over the precious ore within as his lashes flutter to haze his vision in time with the spend of pleasure rushing through him. His legs tremble to flex tight around Gimli behind him, his shoulders curve up as his arm braces at the sheets, and when he comes it’s with that plea still on his lips, begging made near-worship by the coursing veins of pleasure Gimli has found buried within him. Legolas’s clear gaze falls out of focus, his steady hands tremble on surging waves of heat, and for the span of long heartbeats he lingers in an eternity far more pleasurable than the one he has spent all his life facing alone.

Gimli keeps moving, holding steady even as Legolas shudders through heat around him. His rhythm is set, unflinching even as the other gives way; Legolas can feel the friction at a great distance, the same unhesitating rhythm that he gains from the pounding of his heart, as if he and Gimli might be extensions of each other, two parts of a single whole instead of the separate identities they would appear to be at other times, to other people. Legolas’s breathing is sticking in his chest, struggling over friction as he gasps against the spread of the blankets beneath them, and finally Gimli draws in a huge lungful of air, and groans it into voice for the relief that spills him into Legolas before him. His hips move through the last surges of pressure as he rides himself out to his own completion, and then his motion eases, his hands loosen, and Legolas shuts his eyes and breathes long, dragging inhales from the heat against the surface of the bed.

Gimli draws away, after a moment, easing himself back into comfort and away from the hold of Legolas’s body on him. Legolas doesn’t turn his head to look back, even when the bed beneath him shifts with the motion of Gimli falling to lie alongside him, and when Gimli heaves a breath Legolas steadies his own inhales to fall into matched rhythm with those of the Dwarf lying behind him. They lie still, the sheets soft and their breathing rough, and finally Legolas shifts to set an elbow under himself so he can turn over onto his back. Gimli slides his arm to fit around the span of Legolas’s shoulder, under the weight of his loose hair, and when Legolas turns in against him Gimli shifts to make a pillow of his shoulder for the other’s head.

Legolas waits to speak until he’s sure he can trust his voice to hold steady. “That doesn’t count as your win, you know.”

Gimli snorts far in the back of his throat, a rasping sound closer to a cough than a laugh. “Was it not?” he asks. “I had ye all but in tears begging for me to continue, laddy, how d’ye take that to your win?”

“All but,” Legolas repeats, in his haughtiest tone, and lifts his arm to drape around the solid weight of muscle forming Gimli’s torso. “Do dwarves usually count their triumphs so sloppily?”

Gimli’s laugh is rumbling but his touch is gentle against Legolas’s hair when he reaches to urge the weight of it back from the other’s face. “Ye mean to claim this as another draw?”

“Mm.” Legolas turns his head in against Gimli’s shoulder and lets a long breath go. “If you wish to refuse another foray I am happy to claim my victory by default.”

“Never,” Gimli tells him with comfortable warmth. “I’ll teach ye the meaning of Dwarvish stamina yet, Elf.” His hand slides down to curl against the back of Legolas’s neck, and Legolas smiles before he lifts his head to fit the press of his lips gently against the prickling weight of Gimli’s ruddy beard.

After centuries of calm, love is a novelty he doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of.


End file.
